State should put its money where lake's mouth is

If next May is like preceding years, we can expect various Trenton politicians to start complaining, whining, moaning, kvetching and bitching about the lack of beach access at the Shore.

But where were these guys Saturday morning? About 200 locals showed up in Long Branch to call for the preservation of the Takanassee beach club, which occupies one of the few remaining stretches of open oceanfront in the northern part of the Jersey Shore. The beach area is adjacent to Lake Takanassee, which stretches for several blocks inland.

A developer wants to buy the property and cover it with vacation homes and condos. The developer is getting an amazing amount of cooperation from state Department of Environmental Protection, which is considering a coastal area permit that would allow the construction.

I have seen the DEP halt much worthier projects, such as new dorms for a state college, over the mere suggestion that a wood turtle might saunter by. But this plan seems to be sailing through, as do most development plans for Democrat-controlled Long Branch.

I'll get back to the politics in a minute, but first let me describe the area, which has as much historical, environmental and recreational value as perhaps any other spot in the state.

Lake Takanassee has a claim to being the birthplace of the running boom. On its banks is a statue of George Sheehan, the Red Bank cardiologist whose books helped spark that boom. In the 1960s, Sheehan was a regular participant in the summer series of 5,000-meter races around the lake that is arguably the oldest race series in America.

Next to the lake is St. Michael's Church, which opened its doors in 1891 and regularly appears in books and on calendars of Victorian-era architecture.

At the beach itself is an even older example of Victorian-era architecture, one of the few remaining stations of the U.S. Lifesaving Service, which later became the U.S. Coast Guard. Of the three historic buildings there, the oldest dates to 1879.

When I took a walk around the beach club with John Weber of the Surfrider Foundation, one of the groups opposing the plan, I quickly found that it has all of the attributes that the political class demands that Shore towns provide summer visitors. There was ample parking. There were changing rooms. There was a wide sand beach, a rarity in heavily eroded Long Branch. There was even a large swimming pool.

That would all disappear under the plan, said Weber. Some of the construction would be on an artificial wharf built over a waterway that connects the lake to the ocean. This waterway is not merely a theoretical habitat for wood turtles but a real habitat for herring that migrate each year up a fish ladder to the lake.

Weber pointed to the nearest beach access to the north, a narrow path shadowed by a condo complex several blocks away. "To the south, the beach access is way down in the middle of Elberon," said Weber, pointing to the neighboring town, which has almost no parking for beachgoers and not much in the way of beaches.

The Takanassee club is just one of many old-fashioned beach clubs along the Shore that gradually are being bought up and converted to private housing. The state has no plans to acquire any of them, which makes you wonder why those North Jersey legislators spend so much time complaining about the lack of beach access.

The main complainer is Assemblyman Neil Cohen, a Union County Democrat whose rite of spring consists of calling for an end to beach badges in New Jersey. I called Cohen and explained the situation at Lake Takanassee. I asked why the state doesn't buy such beaches to ease access.

"That's a good point," said Cohen.

State Sen. Joe Vitale of Woodbridge, another chronic kvetcher about beach access, had a similar reaction.

"That's a good question," said Vitale. "I don't know why that hasn't been discussed or considered in the past."

Neither do I. And when it comes to the Takanassee beach, the need to preserve it is so obvious that perhaps the Trenton crowd will finally get a clue. Assemblyman Sean Kean certainly hopes so. The Republican, whose district includes Long Branch, has introduced a bill to set aside Green Acres money to buy the beach.

"There's a diminishing amount of open space for swimming, surfing and fishing," Kean said. "There's a diminishing number of these beach clubs, and they're going to be lost."

Kean said the first priority is to get the DEP to take this deal off the fast track.

"Something's wrong for the state to sit down with these folks and bend over backward to accommodate them," said Kean.

He's right about that. There is indeed something fishy about this deal - and it's not those herring trying to get to the lake.